Puebla ... mole poblano, Volkswagen factory, telavera (ceramics) and the Popo Vulcano towering nearby. My 2nd Mexican outing led to this charming, cramped city, 2 hours drive from Mexico City. It took my neighbourly friend Alexandra and myself a good 20 minutes to find the turn-off to the fancy design hotel La Purificadora (spacy, alla fresca, glass staircases, great breakfast, location somewhat odd next to a shopping centre-cinema complex with a lovely garden).

We tried out a restaurant recommended to me (La Conjura, not exciting), came upon a lovely museum, which luckily was still open due to the ¨noche de los museos¨ and joined the crowds on the zocalo (main square). We had a very decent dinner with the obligatory mole poblano in an inner courtyard restaurant, whose walls were covered in naive paintings.

It was Buen Fin weekend (which has become a shopping weekend due to nation-wide discounts), so the next day´s pleasure of finding the Uriarte Ceramics Store was much enhanced. It´s quite a hike, though still in what is called the centro historic. You are well rewarded after spotting the fabulous tiled facade and entering into an interior courtyard with tile-covered walls and a display of their wonderful pottery (I was in heaven).

Because the Museo Bello y Gonzalez was closed - and because Puebla is charming - I shall go there again!

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead - not the movie)

It's that time of the year in Mexico (1-2nd November). The Day of the Dead, when everybody gathers at the cemetery to have a jolly good time with the loved ones gone. It's a weekend in fact, with the first night dedicated to the children who passed away. A work colleague and I headed to San Andres Mixquic, still part of D.F. (Mexico City), though it does not seem like it is. Amazingly enough, a photo I've used in one of my collages is indeed a night shot of the cemetery in that village. One more reason to drive there! Orange flowers are most prominent in the ceremony (my favourite colour) - another reason to check out Dia de los Muertos! We passed through canal-riddled Xochimilco and after a few traffic jams in the various hamlets - with their cemeteries and surrounding market stands full of people wanting to connect with the dead - we made it to Mixquic. 

It's a pretty ugly place, but for the main church - baroque overload - and its charming burial grounds. I said a little prayer for Mum. Most of the village had turned into a market stand fiesta, offering trinkets, silly gadgets, Christmas decorations and flowers, not to forget the food, food, food! It was packed, but I was glad to see that crowd control emergency planning has been taken care of (see photo). I find it attractive to turn remembrance into something cheerful and social. It takes the sourly, protestant sting out of dealing with the dead. 

We did not stay until the evening to watch a see of lit candles, but returned to the big city instead, to have a proper meal. 

Addis to Kolumsa

Long time no blog. Early October I went to Ethiopia for the first time. For the "Wheat for Food Security in Africa" Conference. Addis is a big building site - given the little that I saw of this 4-million city lying on a plateau as high up as Mexico City. The hotel was surrounded by emerging highrise buildings. In fact, I shared the hotel car with Chinese construction workers, who are building the hotel's next wing.

One of the Conference days was reserved for a field trip to Kolumsa, the national agricultural research station for wheat.  Getting out of Addis takes a while - very spread out - we passed a brand new light industrial zone built by the Chinese and then you enter an almost European countryside. Wide vistas of mellow, green plains surrounded by hills. The teff (local grain) fields are turned into handsome waves by the wind. We stopped by a farmer, with his two hectares of wheat, to learn how he was doing, wheat-wise. He held his own, surrounded by two busloads of agricultural researchers. At Kolumsa, we were given a good show, which included the presentation of a small mechanisation project funded by the German Government. Apparently, once you get to 2 hectares, oxen & plough won't do anymore and a small tractor would come in handy, to save time, labour and livestock maintenance costs. The drive back provided a good dose of Addis traffic jams. All in all, a lovely trip!

Brief: My take on the risk of another food crisis

Chapingo: A Local Outing

This week, a CIMMYT outing took us to Chapingo, the campus of Mexico's major agricultural university, 20 minutes from the CIMMYT campus. It is housed in a lovely hacienda, complete with grand inner courtyard. Not only can you visit the Diego Rivera-decorated ex-chapel - surely the only chapel worldwide to feature communist symbols - but also the newly renovated Agricultural Museum, which combines exhibits of ancient farmers' implements with contemporary artists' interpretations of pottery/ceramic arts, which depict rural scenes.

There is something intriguingly naive about Mexican Art. The colors, the shapes, the subjects ... there is much humour, a comics dimension, often a political or social meaning - you know, art with a message, with a socialist state flavor sometimes. The Rivera (ex)chapel amazes with its references to the Sixtine Chapel and Renaissancy symbolism of fertility, translated into easily readable, beautiful coloured wall sections. Very nice buttocks, too, as the male among females on the outer wall attests to.

As a digestif, do enjoy the Mexican take on recycling.

Mixed Mexican Bag (Fin de semanas)

Sunday two weeks ago, I agonized, anticipated and then celebrated the Spanish EUFA win in a restaurant, majority-occcupied by Spanish supporters, on Plaza de Madrid, in Mexico City (naturally, I was on the Italian side; they did a shitty job!). It wasn't a huge crowd, given how many Spaniards live in this city, though a joyous one!

That same weekend, my German neighbour Alexandra brought me to the Mercado San Juan, close to the Centro Historico. After enjoying an excellent cappuccino, we strolled the stalls, whose owners are highly adept at the traditional "try this, so fabulous; try that" routine, slicing and cutting up fruit etc. etc., so that, fool that I am, I bought! You can also enjoy a freshly made baguette sandwich with a plastic cup of wine there (we did, of course).

Last weekend, I finally made it to the Franz Mayer. The Franz Mayer? you'd ask. It is the museal legacy of a German immigrant from Mannheim, who settled in Mexico City in the mid-19th century, obviously had a fable for the arts decoratifs, made quite some money (finance) and spent it on building a collection, to be revered to this day. The museum space is lovely, a bit of a mixed bag collection, though with extraordinary exhibits, which you can then digest, sitting in a gorgeous courtyard, with your cup of tea of coffee. The current special exhibit focuses on the depiction of theVirtues and Vices/Sins, in the New World. Somehow so topical .... . Contemporary ceramics were exhibited on the first floor of the inner courtyard, which some striking pieces to enjoy! (The ceramic TV sets did it for me!).

Thanks to some friends from work I also enjoyed the first pop (as opposed to classical) concert in D.F.! The women (mostly) singing along with Carla Morrison, the folksy tunes so well arranged, t'was most touching to see. She's a passionate and a little chubby young woman, who moves and dances in a most wonderfully natural and engaging manner on the stage. No chi chi, no bla bla, just lot's of 'the man I love', 'the pain of having boyfriends'-type songs (or so I thought, my Spanish being what it is - I missed a lot - she's also passionate about changing her country!).

You may note I write ofweekends. As I have joined the 9-5 crowd, add an hour or two and having become a commuter, during the week there's nothing I'd rather do than 'chill'; Jan will appreciate that, being in the same boat in Hamburg, when I wasn't ... . 

This weekend, I had an errand to perform: Buy perfumes from a small stall in the city's main cathedral for Judith in Marseille. So I took the Metrobus 1, got off at Revolucion, stumbled on an open-air concert in a pretty square, hopped on Metrobus 4 to somewhere near the Main Square, finally got there, did my stuff and walked around the centro historico a little more. The Farmacia de Paris I'd seen before. This time I walked in. I was NOT alone! This is surely the most amazing pharmacy-cosmetics-household cleaning needs shopping experience to be had! I took the one photo of the cash register lights, but no more, as it is company policy not to allow photos being taken. Moving on, the Calle Regina is a very handsome pedestrian zone, along which stands a church, which, by its exterior walls, truly hides what it holds in store inside. In fact, this is very much a Mexican, and probably Spanish thing, this rather bland-facade-not-giving-you-a-clue-what's-behind type of architecture. Italians have balanced it a little better, the outside-inside relationship and were much better city planners besides. Be that as it may, as the only visitor to the church I was left alone with my flabbergastedness.

Last but certainly (1) not least, I came across a facade - a completely grotesque facade - full of grotesques! The Auricular kind (shell- or metallic-type forms), which was surely passed on from Holland, then Habsburg-Spanish, to the Spanish New World! What a feast this facade is, over-saturated with arty fats. Let's see what the next weekends will have in store?

Mexico City's (Hidden) Treasures

An airline magazine article featured 5 quiet green spots in the city. Fortunately, the article did not include the secret garden in San Angel, so it can stay a bit of a secret. Over time, I've visited 4 of them. A pretty one is Plaza Gomez Feria, situated in a village neighborhood, whose street names refer to well-known painters. You'd never know you were in 25Mil Mexico City.

Next door is the Mixcoac quarter, which features a handsome church, which I failed to find. To compensate, I came across one of the many verdant courtyards behind high walls, in which some D.F. people are privileged to live. Wouldn't I like to have that key ...

A recurring pleasure in this city is to discover architectural details - of just about any period in the 19th and 20th century -which make you marvel, or smile. How about this 70's (?) letter box-cum-apartment bell/intercom system? So often, my eyes catch some such little treasure, but I don't capture it on camera.

Summer rain in Mexico

The most exciting thing on my routine commuter trip to Texcoco / CIMMYT - apart from being able to see Popo, the volcano, fuming - is the railroad crossing near the airport.  Once in a while, a very, very long cargo train moves slowly across the completely unprotected crossing, whilst the cars left, right, and center get ready to storm across first once the last cargo wagon has passed. 

As I write, a thunderstorm leaves its mark on Mexico City. T'is the rainy saison in Mexico, so a trip to Guarnevaca, the city of eternal spring, was a wet one. A friend of mine and I dropped into the local hacienda restaurant, enjoyed a Sunday pre-lunch drink whilst sitting under an awning, watching the rain wet the garden (and the peacocks). After a good half hour, we were taken to our table across the garden (under those parasols over there) and digested a very good lunch. Guernavaca is nothing to write home about, it's a pretty ugly city, nonetheless surrounded by beautiful hilly countryside, lying in an expansive valley, which you drive down from in serpentine fashion, coming from Mexico City. The pass between the two cities lies 3100 meters high.

Traffic, traffic, traffic, that's Mexico City, if you want to get around. If you stay in Condesa (where I live), no traffic to speak of (but the Thu-Fri-Sat bridge and tunnel crowd driving in to have some fun, blocking the avenues, as they have their cars valet-parked; I've yet to understand where all those cars are placed; somehow, the valets manage. Virtually every bar (!) has valet-parking). But if you want to go some other part of the city - generally there's a bit or a lot of traffic any day of the week. If 500,000 of the 25 million inhabitants want to move, I suppose that's enough to jam the roads a little. 

There you have it, endless clouds hovering over the endless city. Life goes on. The street sellers sell, the commuters hop into small buses at every corner, the metro runs (I've never yet hopped onto it) and the cars jamboree.

(First) Voyage to India

It's been a whirlwind tour of two states (Bihar and Madyhar Pradesh) in India and Delhi in between. There is so much, which the road movie I've stitched together does not get across:  The street noise (lot's of honking, like in Cairo really), how people move, the dare-devil driving in traffic, traffic, traffic and of course, the food, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed (the yoghurty stuff reminded me of Turkey-Iran, it's a vegetarian haven, the spiciness seems unique ...). I joined CIMMYT management in a tour of two of three research stations, which will become part of the Borlaug Institute of South Asia, a joint venture with the Government of India. India is the world's second largest producer of wheat. I do hope you enjoy the travelogue video (I apologize about the low resolution, but could not upload a higher quality version).

El Cairo

Cairo .... ; until May 2012, the closest I had gotten to this magical city was a Paul Temple adventure: The Sullivan Case, during which the Temples flew (!) to Cairo with a seaplane via Italy. I arrived with Lufthansa at 3 am in the morning. A huge airport, huge roads leading to it and a huge highway, which takes you into the centre. Two fishermen were working on the day's catch on the enormous bridge, which takes you across the Nile. When I arrived at the hotel, opposite the Goethe Institut, an all white villa in the middle of beige - that being Cairo's essential colour - a troupe of workers were polishing the lobby marble. No wonder, because this lobby was busy all day and evening, a place to meet and greet, an Arabian bazaar! Cairo's beige - dirty, bright, faded, gone - distinguishes it from Mexico City's more colorful hues, but otherwise it's just a big, with as much traffic and street life - and a dry climate.

After the first day of work and a good night's sleep, I woke up at 6, so I thought (it was 5 am), got dressed and walked through the lovely quarter, full of fascinating architecture, sleepy kiosk owners, straying cats and road sweepers, to the Nile, which was just waking up, all hazy. I didn't see much more of the city, but the movie attests to a road trip 2 hrs south to an agricultural research station, which we undertook on my third day there.

We rode on the eastern, deserty side of the Nile, as that was the faster route. Cairo did not want to end, but at some point, after passing the prison, where apparently Mubarak was held for a while, we did hit the desert - which contained brick factories with their high smokestacks. The desert looks just like the one around Abu Dhabi. Finally we came to the Nile again and crossed it, to enter its fertile surroundings. I hope to be there again!

Tiempo volcano

An odd feeling, driving along a toll road to work and watching an active volcano, which is spewing ash to the other side. 2400 m high Mexico City is surrounded by a more or less rectangular mountain range, which includes the Popo(catepetl).

Popo means 'the behind' in German. Popocatepl Square is one of my favorite places in Condesa, wish I could live there! But that is beside the point, when you drive along, watching white smoke rise from this 5000+ m high volcano; which makes you think of the unfathomable forces of nature, so much more powerful than we can imagine, despite our centuries of tampering with her (or it).Live web cam from the volcano

Get to know the neighborhood (Mexico City)

A gleaming Sunday invited for an exploratory stroll. Leaving Condesa, I crossed a bridge and took fright! A hole in the concrete stopped me in my tracks. Having photographed it, I felt more secure. Once at the other end, the steps led to a garden with a row of busts of Mexican musical heroines and heroes. The garden is surrounded by many-lane roads, including the six lane highway you have to cross to get to St. Miguel de Chapultepec.

Miguel is less done up than its fancier neighbor Condesa, but offers the same bewildering array of architectural styles: Art Deco, Belle Epoque, Hazienda style, the 40's, 50's and some very impressive contemporary buildings. It is a quieter colonia too, though just as green, thanks to the trees lining the streets. A magnificent palm trees was among them. I heard a trumpet being played and soon discovered that an old gentleman was playing here, the moving on, there, for his personal pleasure and to earn a few coins of recognition, I suppose. His music enchanted the neighbourhood.

A hole in the wall restaurant, opened two months ago, caught my eye and I returned to it, after having toured some more blocks. One rather long, rectangle of a room, with a long, uninterrupted table invited passersby to eat at 'Comedor'. I only had a cappuccino, but shall be back for more. Aiming to cross the wide highway at another point, I noticed a ream of flags cutting across the highway. Who had put them up, connecting the high-rise apartment block with a lamp post?

Returned to Condesa, I stumbled on a teeny-weeny patisserie instead, where I bought a baguette and two tartelettes. On that street corner, a makeshift taco stand served the neighbors, who sat down on plastic chairs and tables under an awning, to enjoy their snack. On the opposite corner, a pick-up truck-cum-food vendor offered Oaxacan delicacies. Not a block in Mexico City without some culinary offering!